Chosen Brotherhood in Abdellah Taïa’s Celui qui est digne d’être aimé

Abstract

This article analyzes the final letter in Abdellah Taïa’s epistolary novel, Celui qui est digne d’être aimé (2017). First, I examine the relationship of chosen brotherhood between two queer characters, Ahmed and Lahbib, as well as Lahbib’s explicit definition of the brotherly bond between them. Subsequently, I turn to Lahbib’s account of his transnational sexual exploitation, in which he nuances his initial definition of chosen brotherhood to include a protective element. I then show how the transnational sexual encounter, which reveals the residue of the colonial era, causes the boys to look after one another differently. When readers learn that Lahbib will take his own life, the epistolary nature of the text changes and a reading in which the text serves as a cautionary tale emerges. To conclude, I focus on the concept of worth, present in the letter and the novel’s title to argue that chosen brotherhood both serves as a refuge from exploitation and provides the foundational discourse necessary to establish worth among the queer marginalized.

Keywords:

• Abdellah Taïa
• chosen brotherhood
• queer
• worth
• epistolary novel
• transnational sexual encounters

Notes

1 See Abdellah Taïa, “Interview with Abdellah Taia.” Interview by Brian Whitaker. al-bab.com, Jan. 2009, https://al-bab.com/interview-abdellah-taia. Accessed 20 Mar. 2020.

2 Here, I follow Jarrod Hayes’ lead in my use of the term “queer.” I use queer “less as an adjective to describe sexual acts than as a verb to signify a critical practice in which non-normative sexualities infiltrate dominant discourses to loosen their political stronghold” (7).

3 See Brahimi on virility. Taïa implies that “viril” is a desirable quality in Moroccan men. I have chosen to translate it as “hypermasculine” but the translation could also read “potent” or “macho.”

4 Kligerman’s work describes this in detail: “Homosexuality in Islam: A Difficult Paradox.” Macalester Islam Journal, vol. 2, no. 3, 2007, pp. 52–64.

5 Shorthand for the novel’s title.

6 Gérard’s mother.

7 Jasbir Puar addresses the neocolonial impulses of contemporary queer tourism in “A Transnational Feminist Critique of Queer Tourism.” Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, vol. 34, no. 5, 2002, pp. 935–946.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jocelyn Frelier

Jocelyn A. Frelier is an Assistant Professor of French at Sam Houston State University. Her research interests include contemporary Francophone literature and culture, gender studies, transnational theory, and family studies. This article stems from her larger research project on literary depictions of the family unit in the North African diaspora.